I received an email yesterday from
"The Network of Spiritual Progressives," a group run by the left-wing
Rabbi Michael Lerner and devoted to spreading love a peace throughout the
world. The Spiritual Progressives can be counted on to join anti-war
demonstrations and to criticize almost anything Israel does to protect its citizens
from Palestinian terror. This particular email was concerned with the raging
political crisis in Venezuela.

The email contained an essay on Venezuela
by Tom Hayden, one of the most
important activists of the 1960s. Hayden drafted the Port Huron Statement in
1962, which launched the New Left and inspired a generation whose politics were
stamped by the civil rights and anti-war movements, and who embraced utopian
ideals like "participatory democracy." They are today's Democratic
Party leaders and mainstream media gatekeepers.

Hayden, like many of the leaders
of Students for a Democratic Society,
became more and more radical, visiting North Vietnam and the like. But
Hayden never quite left mainstream politics, and became an important leader
among California's
Democrats, serving in both houses of the state legislature over nearly two
decades. He was married to Jane Fonda and remains a progressive icon. His views
both reflect and inspire others' on the left.

Rabbi Lerner introduced Hayden's
comments on Venezuela as
"an important perspective on the current conflict in Venezuela that
you won't get from NPR or most of the media." (Evidently
taxpayer-and-donor-funded NPR is as bad as the corporate-owned media, you see.)
The gist of Hayden's argument was that a shadowy government, beyond the control
of President Barack Obama, wants Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez's successor, overthrown.

Hayden shows no concern whatsoever
for the erosion of democracy under Chávez and Maduro, no compassion for unarmed
demonstrators murdered in the streets, no shock at the Venezuelan's utter
destruction of the oil-rich economy. This icon of "participatory
democracy" shows no outrage at the arrest of Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of
the opposition, no concern about widely-reported torture of demonstrators in
Venezuelan prisons.

He is concerned, Hayden writes,
that U.S. foreign policy is
being run by a "state within a state," dating back to "the CIA's
operations against Cuba."
He is not concerned in the slightest that Cuba itself is running a "state
within a state" in Venezuela, openly assisting the Maduro regime in
suppressing opposition and protest as millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil are
shipped to Cuba to prop up the brutally tenacious Castro brothers.

Hayden gives Obama the benefit of
the doubt: after all, "a friendly Obama shook the hand of Hugo Chavez [in
2009] before Obama's top adviser tried to sabotage the warming of
relations," after all. Yet he is worried that Obama's friendship towards Venezuela's
government will be undermined by "a secret network that works tirelessly
to undermine any Latin American threat to the dominance of American capital and
military power."

It is not shocking that a 1960s
radical would believe such stuff. It is, however, rather surprising that a
group that prides itself on its embrace of non-violence would circulate
Hayden's views with approval, shamelessly excusing any and all violence and
tyranny by the Venezuelan state. The next time you hear these progressive
Democrats complain about the U.S.
military or about Israeli occupation, remember their support for murder in Venezuela.

Tom Hayden

Tom
Hayden was a co-founder for the Students
for a Democratic Society, married to Jane
Fonda, and is an editorial board member for The Nation.

Note: Jane Fonda A.K.A Hanoi Jane was married to Tom Hayden, and married to Ted Turner.

Jessica Tuchman Mathews is a director
at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think
tank), the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), was a board member for the International
Crisis Group, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think
tank).

Ed Griffin’s interview with
Norman Dodd in 1982

(The investigation into the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace uncovered the plans for population
control by involving the United
States in war)

Moises
Naim was a senior associate, International Economics Program minister of
trade and industry for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank), was a board member for the International
Crisis Group, and the minister of trade and industry for Venezuela.

Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), and the Center for American Progress.

George
Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, a board member for the International Crisis Group, was a
supporter for the Center for American
Progress, and the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.

Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), the Center
for American Progress, Media Matters,
the New America Foundation, the Roosevelt Institute, and the Climate Reality Project.

Eric
Alterman is a senior fellow at the Center
for American Progress, a columnist for The
Nation, and was a senior fellow at Media
Matters.

Christopher
Hayes is an editor at large for The
Nation, and was a fellow at the New
America Foundation.

Katrina
vanden Heuvel is an editor & publisher for The Nation, a director at the Roosevelt
Institute, and was a governor for the Roosevelt
Institute.

Arthur M.
Schlesinger Jr. was a co-chairman for the Roosevelt Institute, and a co-founder for the Americans for Democratic Action.

Richard Parker was
the president of the Americans for
Democratic Action, a co-founder for Mother
Jones, and is an editorial board member for The Nation.

Once upon a time, Democrats complained
about fatcats funding campaigns. Then they discovered that it was they who had
the fatter cats. So that made the situation different: Fatcats—at least liberal
fatcats—are okay.

The problem for elected Democrats, though,
is that while the money is good, the politics are bad. The new breed of
Demo-fatcat demands that candidates embrace a Green ideology that happens to be
ballot-box poison.

But Greenism is political poison, of
course, only if the voters find out about it. And it’s possible that the money
that’s enticing Democratic candidates can also be used, unfortunately, for
bamboozling the voters. We’ll know for sure this November.

As recently as late last year, President
Obama was asked about the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, a decision that
opened the door wider to big campaign donations. Quoth the President:

There aren’t a lot of functioning
democracies around the world that work this way, where you can basically have
millionaires and billionaires bankrolling whoever they want, however they want.

Yet interestingly, Obama made no mention
of campaign finance reform in his 2014 State of the Union address. This
agenda-setting speech is typically encyclopedic in its laundry-listing of
everything that’s on a commander-in-chief’s mind—and yet in this particular
speech, nearly 7000 words long, POTUS made no mention of money in politics.

So why the silence? What might have
chilled the President’s interest? One possible clue can be found in a news
article in Sunday’s Washington Post headlined, “Environmental advocates target
climate change as Democratic election issue.” Actually, the headline might be
translated to read, “Green liberal billionaires plot to elect Democrats who
will squeeze down the energy industry.” Indeed, the piece details the efforts
of former vice president Al Gore and a coterie of billionaires, mostly
clustered in the San Francisco Bay Area, including hedge funder Tom Steyer and Esprit founder Susie
Tompkins Buell, to bankroll the Democrats to victory in 2014.

Or maybe we should say, “bankroll
Democrats to survival.” As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asserted on Sunday, “a rosy
scenario” for Senate Democrats in 2014 is to lose only five seats, and they
could, he added, lose as many as 10. In other words, Democrats need all the
help they can get.

And they can get help from Big Green, and
lots of it—but at a price. As Washington Post writer Juliet Eilperin wrote,
“Wealthy environmentalists are pushing Democrats to take bolder positions on
climate change.” Once again, if we might be allowed to translate, “wealthy”
means, in fact, “super rich.”

Steyer, for example, retired from
investing to devote himself full time to liberal-left activism, mostly, green
activism; he seems determined to play the role of Green Godfather. He
reportedly spent $11 million to help elect Democrat Terry
McAuliffe as governor of Virginia, and he has pledged another $100
million more in the coming the 2014 midterm elections; a look at his website,
Next GenClimate.org, shows he is perfectly happy to be the upfront face of all
his political efforts.

Some might say, of course, that these
liberal Greens are simply trying to keep up with the big spenders on the right.
What about, for example, the Koch Brothers? Surely it takes a lot of Steyerses
to keep with the Kochs. Yet as The Washington Times recently noted:

The Koch brothers, despite their wealth
and interest in politics, are not even in the major league of contributors to
political causes. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics compiled a
list of “Heavy Hitters,” top political donors from 1989 to 2014, and the Koch
brothers are in 59th place. Thirteen of the top 20 donor groups gave nearly all
of their campaign cash to Democrats, with ActBlue leading
the list with $97.2 million, all of it contributed to Democrats… Only three of
the top 20 donor groups gave predominantly to Republicans.

In other words, the left is beating the
right at the big-money game. So once again, we can see why the Democrats don’t
seem preoccupied anymore with the goal of “getting money out of politics.”

And yet money talks, of course, loudly.
Returning to Sunday’s Washington Post article, we might translate more of the
polite reportage into blunter talk, starting with the reference to “bolder
positions on climate change.” What does
“bolder” mean? What’s a bolder position? Here’s what it means: A big lurch to
the Green left.

At the top of the Steyer agenda is
opposition to the Keystone Pipeline. And that’s problematic for politicians in
most parts of the country, because according to a recent poll, by a 56:41
margin, Americans support the job-creating infrastructure project. In other
words, in return for their campaign cash, the Green billionaires expect
Democratic politicians to take an unpopular stand on a high-profile
controversy.

Yet Keystone is just the beginning. A look
at Steyer’s website shows us the full panoply of San Francisco liberalism, including tax
increases and the claim that climate change “ranks right up there” with
“terrorism, epidemics, poverty, [and] the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.”

Climate change more dangerous than
terrorism or rogue nations? Yes, such a claim might seem laughable to those who
rightly fear Al Qaeda or Iran
or North Korea,
but the view seems to be widely held in elite circles. On February 16,
Secretary of State John Kerry—married
to yet another Green billionaire, Theresa Heinz Kerry—went
one step further, declaring, “Climate change can now be considered another
weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass
destruction [emphasis added]." As they say, ideas have consequences. And
so if jet-set liberals all agree that carbon dioxide is at least as great a
threat as WMD, well, we shouldn’t be surprised that such views are shaping
Obama administration policy.

Of course, Barack Obama, having been re-elected
to the White House, is now done with elections; it’s the Democrats in Congress
who have to face the voters this November.

So how will these Green ideas play in Peoria? And in the
Heartland as a whole? One clue comes from the 2010 midterm elections, when the
voters had a chance to judge House members on their 2009 vote for the “cap and
trade” legislation. And for Democrats, the results weren’t pretty.

Sample headline in Politico immediately
after the ’10 elections: “Democrats’ day of reckoning comes for climate vote.”
As the article explained:

Democrats who voted for the controversial
House climate bill were slaughtered at the ballot box, including Rep. Rick
Boucher, the 14-term Virginian who helped broker some of the key deals
instrumental to its June 2009 passage. In the Senate, several reliable green
advocates also went down to opponents who derided tough new environmental
policies.

With that in mind, what will 2014 be like
for Democrats who take money from Steyer & Co. and then face the voters?
Donors rich with money and guilt are one thing; voters rich with anxieties
about jobs and income are quite another. As even the liberal-friendly
Washington Post had to concede in its article on Steyer:

The Democratic Party’s relationship with
the environmental movement remains fraught — torn between fervent believers and
centrists reluctant to go against traditional energy industry interests that
play a major role in their state’s economies. Most of the Democratic candidates
facing the toughest Senate races at the moment are in states that traditionally
favor the fossil fuel industry, including Alaska,
Louisiana, Kentucky
and West Virginia.

The problem, of course, is jobs and
economic growth. On Steyer’s website, we see a little bit of language about the
need to “preserve American prosperity”—although no mention of the need to
increase American prosperity. Of course, the case for growth as a result of
Green policies is a hard, if not impossible, argument to make these days; in
the wake of Solyndra and all the other Green boondoggles, only a few
propagandists still claim that a Green Economy will be anything more than a
Lean Economy.

In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that
that’s exactly what the the Greens want: Less, to them, is more. After all, the
roots of today’s Green movement are found in the gloomy maunderings of Thomas
Malthus, who worried about too much growth—back in the late in the late 18th
century. Ever since then, the same mindset, a back-to-nature combination of
pessimism and elitism, has animated the radical wing of the environmental
movement.

Indeed, if we’re curious as to what the
Greens really think, we need only read what they say to each other in policy
discussions. One who monitors the Green Movement closely is Marc Morano of
ClimateDepot.com, which points us to such revealing items as a recent press
release from the Sierra Club (a group headquartered in, where else? San Francisco). In this
release, a Green is approvingly quoted as saying, “There’s no such thing as
sustainable growth, not in a country like the US. We have to de-grow our
economy.” Yes, that’s right: “de-grow.” The goal is to “de-grow our economy.”

And jobs? Should we “de-grow” them, too?
Another Green quoted in the same Sierra Club item declares, “We know that when
an economy isn't growing, you tend to get a fallout of higher unemployment. So
you have to spread the work around more evenly.” Got that? Higher unemployment
is acceptable, maybe even a goal? And we can all try to pay the mortgage on, 30
hours of work a week? Or maybe 25?

These are shocking quotes, to be sure. Yet
in view of their history, why shouldn’t we take the Greens at their word—that
is, when they say they want everyone to live with less?

Well, okay, maybe not everyone has to live
with less: When we compare the lifestyle that Big Green billionaires choose for
themselves, compared to the lifestyle that they would choose for us, words such
as “double standard” and “hypocrisy” leap to mind. They might have a Prius or a
bicycle for show, but when they really need to get around, limousines and
private jets are the standard mode of transportation. Here’s looking at you, Al
Gore!

By contrast, the Koch Brothers, and their
allies on the pro-growth right, are utterly sincere; what you see is what you
get. Love them or hate them, they have always been upfront about what they
believe in: lower taxes, less regulation, and inexpensive and abundant energy.

So voters who want growth should vote with
the Kochs—and no voter who wants “more” should be deceived into voting
otherwise. As for those who sincerely oppose growth, they should vote with Steyer.

Obviously such clear-cut calculus poses a
big problem for Democrats, because the vast majority of voters do indeed want
growth. As shown by what happened to the Democrats in the 2010 midterms, Steyer
could prove to be less of a Green Godfather and more of a Green Pied
Piper—piping a tune that carries Democrats to their doom.

So here’s where all the Green billionaires
and their lavish campaign contributions can potentially make a decisive
difference—that is, they might be able to buy some elections for Democrats. As
we have seen, Obama and his allies don’t want to do anything to crimp such
spending and thus stymie the attempted campaign bamboozlement.

In addition, the mainstream media can come
to the aid of the Greens and the Democrats. Just over the weekend, CNN
declared, “There are some stories which do not have two sides. The climate
change debate is one of them.” In other words, if anyone questions the
importance of climate change, well, they’re just not to be taken seriously.

Actually, while CNN
might not ever want to admit it, there is a great deal of scientific literature
on the other side of the debate. For a look, one might start with the work
Steven Goddard, who has tirelessly tracked the oscillations of scientific
“consensus”—as it has veered from dire projections of global cooling, then to
projections of global warming, and now to the all-purpose catchall projection
of “climate change.”

And that’s the key word, “change,”
although not in the way the Greens wish to say it. Over the course of billions
of years, long before humans came on the scene , the temperature of the earth
has varied greatly. Why? One big reason is the sun: When the sun varies, earth
varies, too. (Other big variables are volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes,
neither of which are subject to human influence.)

In fact, the amount of heat that humans
generate is vastly outnumbered by the amount of radiant energy coming from the
star next door. Outnumbered by how much? According to the Sandia National
Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM, the solar energy that hits the earth every year
is some 300,000 times greater than the world’s annual energy production. In
other words, the slightest tick, upward or downward, in solar radiation has vastly
more impact on the earth’s temperature than anything that mere humans might do
or not do.

Scientific evidence suggests that solar
radiation has decreased in the last decade or so, signaling that we might be in
for a cooling period, “greenhouse gases” notwithstanding. Indeed, the recent
reduction in radiation seems to explain the “pause” in warming that even
global-warming alarmists have been forced to acknowledge.

In the meantime, as the science sorts
itself out, national policymakers are better advised to focus on immediate
issues—that is, not on the sea level in a hundred years, but, rather, on jobs
and the economy.

Indeed, the importance of economic growth
suggests that the American people will reject Steyer & Co. this November—no
matter how much money they are willing to spend.

But we must remember: Win or lose in 2014,
Steyer will still be rich, and presumably he’ll be ready to rumble yet again in
2016.

Susie Tompkins Buell

Susie
Tompkins Buell was a funder for the Bill, Hillary &
Chelsea Clinton Foundation, a contributor for the American Bridge 21st Century, a member of the Democracy Alliance, a contributor at Ready for
Hillary, a donor for Media Matters, and
is a national finance council member at Ready for Hillary.

Note: Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and the Center for American Progress.

George Soros
is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations,
a co-chair, national finance council for the Ready for
Hillary, a director at the Brain Trauma Foundation,
was a contributor for the American Bridge 21st
Century, a member of the Democracy Alliance,
and the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open
Society.

Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for Media
Matters, the Center for American
Progress, the Center for International
Policy, the Climate Reality Project,
and the Brookings Institution (think tank).

Darcy
Burner is a director at the Center for International
Policy, and was a director at ActBlue.

Hassan
Nemazee was a director at the Brain Trauma Foundation,
is a friend of Terence R. McAuliffe, and a friend
of Albert A. Gore Jr.

Terence
R. McAuliffe is a friend of Hassan Nemazee,
a director at the Bill, Hillary &
Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and the governor-elect for the Virginia state government.

Albert A.
Gore Jr. is a friend of Hassan Nemazee,
and the chairman for the Climate Reality Project.

Carol M.
Browner was a director at the Climate Reality Project,
the energy czar for the Barack Obama
administration, and is a senior fellow, director at the Center for American Progress.

John D.
Podesta is a counselor for the Barack Obama
administration, the chair & counselor for the Center for American Progress, and was the temporary CEO for
the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Lawrence H. Summers
is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American
Progress, was a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).

Laura
D'Andrea Tyson is a fellow at the Center for American
Progress, was a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank).

Teresa
Heinz Kerry is an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), married to John F.
Kerry, a life trustee at the Carnegie Mellon University,
and a trustee at the Carnegie Museums of
Pittsburgh.

John F. Kerry
is married to Teresa Heinz Kerry, and the secretary
at the U.S. Department of State for the Barack Obama administration, and his brother is Cameron F. Kerry.

Cameron
F. Kerry is John F. Kerry’s brother, a fellow
at the Brookings Institution (think tank),
and was the general counsel; acting secretary for the U.S.
Department of Commerce.

Jessica Tuchman Mathews
was an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank), a director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative
(think tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think
tank).

Ed Griffin’s interview
with Norman Dodd in 1982

(The investigation into
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace uncovered the plans for
population control by involving the United States in war)

Andrew
Carnegie was the founder of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank), the endowed
predecessor schools for the Carnegie Mellon University,
and the founder of the Carnegie Museums of
Pittsburgh.

Teresa
Heinz Kerry is a life trustee at the Carnegie Mellon University,
a trustee at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, an
honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank), and married to John F. Kerry.

According to the Cato Institute, welfare benefits payout more than a minimum wage job in at least 35 states! According to Cato, in thirteen states the payout is more than $15 an hour! And even more shocking, is that if someone were to draw all of the welfare benefits that they are “entitled” to, their pay would be more than that of a newly college educated teacher (burdened with student loan debt, no doubt) in eleven states, and it would add up to more than the salary of a computer programmer in three states!

The highest welfare payout states pay more than $20 an hour, and they include: Hawaii, with payments equaling $29.13 per hour, DC at $24.43 per hour, Massachusetts at $24.30 , Connecticut at $21.33, New York at $21.01 per hour, New Jersey at $20.89 per hour, Rhode Island at $20.83 per hour and Vermont at $20.36 per hour.

The Cato study was authored by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes and it was titled “The Work Versus Welfare Tradeoff, 2013.”

Let’s have one more look at that chart, so you can see where your state stacks up. Are your neighbors in your area getting more money in welfare benefits than you are earning breaking your back day in and day out down at your job?

The Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigation Chairman Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) is calling on the Department of Housing and Urban Development
to provide key current and former officials for testimony at an upcoming
hearing on the scandal at their agency.

One official, Elliot Mincberg,
attempted to withhold information from Congress and the IG and claimed he was
doing so at the direction of and in “coordination” with top lawyers from
President Obama’s White House.

McHenry, whose request for the IG
investigation prompted these discoveries, wrote Thursday to HUD Secretary Shaun
Donovan that he wants Jones, Mincberg, and the other HUD officials to testify
at a forthcoming hearing. McHenry noted that HUD IG David Montoya testified
about these abuses by HUD staff on Wednesday and that a thus-far-unscheduled
hearing seeks the testimony of HUD’s Jones, Mincberg, Peter Constantine,
Jennifer Szubrowski, Francey Youngberg, and Jonathan Harwi.

“In particular, the HUD-IG
testified that certain HUD officials failed to comply with Federal law and HUD
policies prohibiting lobbying, as well as efforts by certain HUD officials to
obstruct the investigation of those matters,” McHenry wrote. “The HUD-IG’s
testimony raises troubling questions concerning HUD's operations. Accordingly,
the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations intends to hold a hearing to
receive the testimony of the individuals whose conduct was described by the
HUD-IG at the hearing.”

McHenry gave Donovan until March 5
“to provide dates within the month of March when the above-named individuals
are available to testify.”

The alleged White House
involvement in obstructing this investigation was buried on page 19 of the
report and was first written about by Breitbart News this week.

While criminal charges have not
been filed against these Obama administration officials, Senate Judiciary
Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Breitbart News that
police may need to get involved here. “Like all administration employees, HUD
employees need to follow the rules on interacting with Congress and the agency
inspector general,” Grassley said in an emailed statement. “If an employee is
trying to withhold information from or obstruct an investigation of the
inspector general or member of Congress, that’s alarming. The appropriate
entities, including law enforcement as necessary, need to get to the bottom of
it.”

U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

Maurice A. Jones
was the deputy secretary at the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and is the secretary of
commerce nominee for the Virginia state government.

Note: Terence R.
McAuliffe is the governor-elect for the Virginia state government, a friend of Hassan Nemazee, and a director at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation.

Hassan
Nemazee is a friend of Terence R.
McAuliffe, and was a director at the Brain
Trauma Foundation.

George
Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, a director at the Brain Trauma Foundation, a board member for the International Crisis Group, and a
supporter for the Center for American
Progress, was the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.

Carla
A. Hills was a board member for the International
Crisis Group, was the secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD), and is a life trustee at the Urban Institute (think tank).

Sarah Rosen
Wartell was the EVP for the Center
for American Progress, the deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), and is the president for the Urban Institute (think tank).

Henry G. Cisneros
is a trustee at the Urban Institute
(think tank), and was the secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD).

James
T. Lynn was an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and the secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD).

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says Attorney GeneralEric Holder has been taken to the
hospital as a precaution after experiencing faintness and shortness of breath
at work.

A statement from the department
says Holder is "resting comfortably and in good condition" at a Washington hospital
after feeling the symptoms during a Thursday morning meeting with senior staff.

The department says the
63-year-old attorney general is alert, talking with his doctors and undergoing
further evaluation.

No additional information was
immediately provided.

The White House says President Barack Obama has been
notified and wishes Holder a "speedy recovery."

Eric Holder

Eric H. Holder Jr.
is the attorney general at the U.S.
Department of Justice for the Barack
Obama administration, a trustee at the Morehouse
School of Medicine, was an intern at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and a board member for
the American Constitution Society.

Note: Louis W. Sullivan
was the president for the Morehouse
School of Medicine, and is an Oak
Bluffs (MA) homeowner.

The Heart Warming Story of The First Southwest Florida MENSA Scholarship Winner

It was a long hard road just to graduate from ImmokaleeHigh School.
Until she was 15 years old, she was on that road following the harvest across America, from
sea to shining sea. There were artichokes in California, cherries in Michigan, and tomatoes in Florida.Maria's mother found a way to give roots to her family. She worked
part-time, lived with relatives, and attended adult education classes while the
rest of the family continued to harvest crops for a living. Maria's mother
became a licensed cosmetologist. She found a job at a beauty shop in Immokalee.
With financial help from the family, they finally had a home.The rest of the family members found jobs, and for the first time in her
life, Maria became a student who could actually stay in one school for an
entire school year. Her grades began to improve. By the time Maria was a
senior, her teachers began to notice that this was no ordinary girl named
Maria.One of her teachers encouraged Maria to apply for the Mensa Scholarship
which is awarded at the end of each school year. Mensa is the high IQ society
and the local chapter members evaluate student essays to determine the winners.
Some Mensa members see themselves as holy guardians of the English language.
Things like spelling, grammar, syntax, and parts of speech are treated with
reverence. Maria's essay was written in English. Maria won!In addition to correct English usage, the Mensa essays are judged on the
goals the student has for the future. Maria had a very simple goal. Maria’s
goal was attending college, majoring in education, with a goal toward a Ph.D.
in education. Her dream is to establish a standard curriculum in all the school
districts in the great harvest regions of our country. She knows, first hand,
that if migrant children can get high quality, consistent education, they will
be able to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty that was so much a way
of life for her family.My wife and I were invited to act as masters of ceremony for the Mensa
Scholarship Awards Dinner. Mensa feels like the parents should at least be
treated to a good dinner at a respectable restaurant, so we get together and
treat the whole family. We were fortunate to be seated at the same table with
Maria and her mother.Maria's mother seemed to tolerate the fuss over her daughter with a
benevolent amusement. Maria bubbled. She was irrepressibly charming. She
confided to my wife that she was afraid that her makeup had smeared or run
before the ceremony had even begun. She explained that they don't have
air-conditioning at home, and the A/C in their old pickup hasn't worked since
last year. Maria and my wife left to do the things that women do in front of
mirrors. Maria's mother, who had seemed so composed earlier, leaned forward
with an intense look on her face, "Maria is going to do something with her
life. Thank you for helping." she said. A slight quiver of the lower lip
was the only hint of the feelings behind her matriarchal dignity. Several of
the people at our table were struck with compassion for what we were
witnessing. We were also inspired by such a pure example of the "American
Dream."When Maria returned, some of us began to offer sympathy for all her
hardships. Maria wanted none of it. "Things aren't so bad now. It has been
a long time since we haven't had enough food", she said cheerfully. We know
people who have a bad day if their hot tub springs a leak. Maria thinks things
are OK if she has eaten that day.Our dinner with Maria caused us to volunteer to head up the Mensa Scholarship Fund Drive.
There are many other bright, deserving young people who need the help a Mensa
Scholarship can give. Please help us make our contributions worthy of the
spirit of young heroes like Maria. Contributions can be mailed to: Rev.
Samuel Sewell

Spike Lee isn't happy
with the current wave of gentrification in his beloved Big Apple and
neighboring communities.

The vocal director implied that
racism is behind some of the perks from gentrification, from better police protection in neighborhoods with
an influx of white citizens to improved amenities for newer city dwellers.

So, why did it take this great
influx of white people to get the schools better? Why’s there more police
protection in Bed Stuy and Harlem now? Why’s
the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We been here!

Lee made the comments during a
Black History Month event at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
The director's outrage wasn't limited to the contrast in attitudes by local
officials. He also said new residents should pay their proper respects to the
existing populace and not expect the local culture to do their bidding.

Then comes the motherfuckin’
Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just
can’t come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherfuckin’ African drums
in Mount Morris Park for 40 years and now they can’t do it anymore because the
new inhabitants said the drums are loud. My father’s a great jazz musician. He
bought a house in nineteen-motherfuckin’-sixty-eight, and the motherfuckin’ people
moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He’s not — he doesn’t even
play electric bass! It’s acoustic! We bought the motherfuckin’ house in
nineteen-sixty-motherfuckin’-eight and now you call the cops? In 2013? Get the
fuck outta here!

Lee then compared the wave of
gentrification to efforts, in his view, to wipe out the Native Americans
already living in the U.S.
during America's
formative years.

Nah. You can’t do that. You can’t
just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you’re
motherfuckin’ Columbus
and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they do in Brazil, what
they did to the indigenous people. You have to come with respect. There’s a
code. There’s people.

Spike Lee

Spike
Lee is an Oak Bluffs (MA)homeowner, and married to Tonya Lewis Lee.

The Town of Oak
Bluffs is a resort town on the northeast shore of the island of Martha's Vineyard,
Massachusetts.
Originally incorporated in 1880 as Cottage
City, in 1907 the town's name was
changed because of the growth in the year round population and the changing
face of the resort required an acknowledgement the town was not just "Cottage City" any more.

Oak Bluffs operates the largest
marina on Martha's Vineyard, which not only has the most slips, but is situated
in the midst of the historic gingerbread campgrounds, and offers easy access to
the rest of the Island. "OB", as it is sometimes referred to, also is home to
several beautiful public beaches, a teaming shore of wildlife, fish and
shellfish, fabulous public parks, a golf course and even a microbrewery.

Tonya Lewis Lee
is married to Spike Lee, and a
director at the NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund.

Professor Gates, who has taught at Harvard for nearly two decades, arrived
home on Thursday from a trip to China to find his front door jammed, said Charles J. Ogletree, a law professor at Harvard who is representing him.

Henry Louis Gates
Jr. is a director at the NAACP Legal
Defense & Educational Fund, an Oak
Bluffs (MA) homeowner, a Harvard University
professor, and was an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).

Jon M. Huntsman
Jr. is a fellow at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and was the U.S.
ambassador for China.

Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, and her great uncle is Vernon E. Jordan Jr.

Spike
Lee is an Oak Bluffs (MA)homeowner, and married to Tonya Lewis Lee.

Tonya Lewis Lee
is married to Spike Lee, and a
director at the NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund.

Eric H. Holder Jr.
was an intern at the NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund, is the attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice for the Barack Obama administration, and a trustee at Morehouse School of Medicine.

Louis W. Sullivan
was the president of Morehouse School of
Medicine, and is Oak Bluffs (MA)homeowner.

Sam on Bob Harden Show

Who Is Aristotle the Hun

"Aristotle the Hun" was the name given to me more than 30 years ago when a friend noticed that in spite of my intellect I was still an Iowa farm boy.

Rev. Sam Sewell, is Director of Best Self USA, a Pastoral Psychotherapist, serves on the faculty of Naples Community Hospital as an instructor for Clinical Pastoral Education, President of the Theological Center in Naples, a member of Mensa where he serves as Gifted Youth Coordinator, a U.S. Navy Veteran, and a Member of the Association For Intelligence Officers. He is a frequent commentator on mental health and religious issues.His award winning research on family issues is published in several languages. Member of Sigma Delta Chi Honor Society

Videos - One of Five

Quotation Gallery

"Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men."- St. Augustine

"A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous, and then dismissed as trivial, until finally it becomes what everybody knows." -

William James

"This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men." --Ronald Reagan

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."-- Edward Abbey

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."John Stuart Mill

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." ~~~George Washington

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." William F. Buckley, Jr.

"Conservatives are enemies of the government. Liberals are enemies of the nation because they are not enemies of the government."Aristotle the Hun

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"Albert Einstein

"Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass...it's about learning how to dance in the rain." ANON

"That government is best which governs least."Thomas Paine

“A nation that substitutes emotion and empathy for rational thought will eventually digress into the Dark Ages,”Congressman Steve King (R-IA),

INTEGRITY: The highest courage is to dare to be ourself in the face of adversity. Choosing ethics over convenience and truth over popularity means there is never a wrong time to do the right thing.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

They may be more likely to go to Heaven for good intentions yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.~ C. S. Lewis

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." ANON

Guide for newbies!

This blog was started to give people a source of information they can trust. I almost never make the mistake of including scams, false rumors, or poorly researched items. I encourage readers to alert me if they spot an anomaly. It will be quickly corrected.

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The government is conspiring against the citizens. The citizens have pitchforks, torches, tea bags, tea parties, Grand Juries and the Constitution. The government doesn't stand a chance!

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The famous Chapter 16 from "I Fired My Doctors" thathas become a "best seller" as a separate publication.

"The stress management chapter alone is worth the price of the book.”
Selwyn Mills, PhD